We the undersigned incarcerated at Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) and the California Institution for Women (CIW) are outraged that CDCR has signed a contract with the GEO Group, the 2nd largest private, for-profit prison corporation in the U.S. According to the contract, GEO will open a new women’s prison in McFarland, CA by fall of 2014.

We call upon California State Legislators to direct CDCR to cancel the contract with GEO and implement existing release programs instead of opening a new prison!

Once again we are shuffled around without regard for our well-being or our human rights. Since VSPW was converted to a men’s prison in January 2013, we have been subjected to overcrowding at historically high levels (CCWF is now at 185% capacity), even while the state is under court order to reduce the prison population. This is discrimination against people in women’s’ prisons! As a result of this overcrowding, health care, mail services, food and education have greatly deteriorated. We are locked down more frequently, leading to heightened tensions, drug overdoses and suicides. The prison staff has responded by locking more people into solitary, further violating our human rights.

CDCR could easily implement existing programs to reduce overcrowding, such as: Alternative Custody Programs (ACP); Elder and Medical Parole; and Compassionate Release. Instead, on April 1, 2014 GEO announced its new contract with CDCR to open a 260 bed women’s prison with an “enhanced rehabilitation and recidivism reduction program.” This is nothing but a bad April Fool’s joke! The 260 women who are “chosen” to go to McFarland could be released through one of these other programs instead. None of us should be hauled off to showcase a so-called “gender responsive” prison and to put money in the pockets of GEO investors.

GEO is a private corporation whose business makes profit from imprisoning primarily people of color and immigrants. GEO’s press release about the new prison reports expected revenue of $9 million in McFarland’s first year. Think of how much $9 million could do for providing community-based re-entry services!

GEO has been the subject of numerous lawsuits around the country about atrocious, unconstitutional conditions. Private prisons are notorious for operating with even greater secrecy than the CDCR: assaults are 49% more frequent; racist behavior and sexual abuse by staff are widespread.

GEO is responsible for human rights violations at many of their facilities. In 2012 GEO was forced to close the Walnut Grove, Mississippi youth detention Center after being condemned for allowing, in the words of Fed. Judge Carlton Reeves, “a cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts and conditions to germinate, the sum of which places the offenders at substantial ongoing risk.”

In March 2014, 1200 people detained in GEO’s Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, WA (for immigrants) went on hunger strike to protest the grossly inadequate medical care, exorbitant commissary prices and low or NO pay for work within the center. Other GEO prisoners have since gone on hunger strike at detention facilities in Conroe, Texas and Stewart, Georgia.

In January of 2014, Governor Jerry Brown’s reelection campaign reported $54,400 in donations from GEO Group. GEO Group has spent $7.6 million on lobbying and campaign contributions in the U.S. in the last decade.

GEO lobbied strongly to advance laws that increased the time served for drug convictions and other non-violent crimes through mandatory minimum sentencing, three-strikes laws, and truth-in-sentencing laws. GEO was a member of the American Legislative Exchange Commission (ALEC) when the model bill that became AB 1070 (profiling immigrants in Arizona) was drafted. These legal changes resulted in significant profits for GEO.

In McFarland, CA, GEO has signed a contract incentivizing prolonged incarceration over release by charging the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation less per prisoner if the facility is more than half full.

GEO operates reentry facilities around the state, including the Taylor Street Center at in San Francisco and the Oakland Center in Oakland. Residents experience these facilities as “re-entry prisons” that are structured to threaten and punish people rather than providing support for people to reenter community life. .

It is shameful that CDCR is about to open a for-profit “boutique prison” that does nothing positive to solve the disproportionate overcrowding in the women’s prisons at this time. Assembly Members and Senators, please intervene! Stop the GEO prison from opening. Instead use this $9 million to fully implement existing release programs immediately and fund community-based (not for-profit) reentry programs.

The refusal by California’s prison authorities to explore options to resolve the hunger strike crisis in the state’s high security units is a dangerous move that could lead to the deaths of inmates in their custody, Amnesty International said.

More than 30,000 prisoners joined a hunger strike last July over inhumane detention conditions in California’s security housing units (SHUs). More than 70 are still refusing food.

“It’s nothing short of appalling that instead of dealing with the complaints, California’s prison authorities have chosen to threaten inmates with force-feeding and disciplinary measures, and have moved some to other facilities,” said Tessa Murphy, Campaigner on the USA at Amnesty International.

“No one should be punished for exercising the right to peaceful protest. California prison authorities must stop toying with people’s lives and meet with the mediation team to begin a meaningful process of negotiation.”

Amnesty International has also received reports that some of those on hunger strike have been denied medical care.

This week, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) published a press release saying that it had addressed some of the inmates’ demands.

“Recent proposals by California’s prison authorities do not go far enough to address the inhumanity that permeates many aspects of the security housing units, including lengthy periods during which inmates are held in isolation and excessively harsh conditions of confinement including lack of social contact and programming,” said Tessa Murphy.

“The rehabilitation of prisoners is absolutely essential for their positive reintegration into society at the end of their sentence.”

Amnesty International is calling on CDCR to reduce the length of the step down programme and to make meaningful changes to the isolation units, particularly in Pelican Bay prison, with an emphasis on increased social contact and rehabilitation.

On 19 August, a federal court issued a decision that would allow the state to force-feed hunger strikers “at risk of near-death or great bodily injury”. The court also ruled that the state may ignore “do not resuscitate” directives if they were signed for the purpose of the hunger strike, or if the state believes they were achieved through coercion.

The force feeding of mentally competent hungers strikers is contrary to medical ethics and breaches their right to freedom of expression.

On Thursday, three federal judges again reminded the California governor that his failure to fix prison overcrowding is a continuing violation of the Eighth Amendment.

Whatever happened to Jerry Brown? You know, the Jerry Brown who once studied to be a Jesuit priest. The Jerry Brown who once fought like a wildcat against the entrenched and the powerful on behalf of the powerless and the dispossessed. The Jerry Brown who once traveled to India and worked with Mother Teresa at her Home for the Dying. The Jerry Brown that conservatives (and others) once derided as “Governor Moonbeam.” The Jerry Brown who never made it as a national political figure because he was considered too much of a softie on law and order, crime and punishment.

That Jerry Brown, now the governor of California, has morphed into a 21st century version of a 1950s Southern governor.* He is currently in “direct defiance” of a series of federal court orders, including one from the Supreme Court, ordering him at last to ease unconstitutional overcrowding in California’s prisons. And the tactics he and his lawyers have employed to evade their obligations to the inmates — and to the nation’s judges — are those employed by Southern governors when they chose to disobey federal commands to desegregate their public schools. Delay. Obfuscation. Interposition. It’s all here again, like a bad dream.

This comes from the LA Times, May 3rd 2013:By Paige St. John, Los Angeles TimesSACRAMENTO — Under threat of contempt of court, Gov.Jerry Brown unveiled a plan to ease prison crowding by releasing certain inmates early, sending others to county jails and relocating some to state fire camps — but added that he doesn’t support it.

Although the plan would remove thousands of inmates from California’s packed prisons, it would not meet court requirements to lower the population by more than 9,000. The jurists could order more inmates freed if they find the governor’s plan unacceptable.

FOR THE RECORD:Prison plan: In the May 4 LATExtra section, an article about Gov. Jerry Brown’s latest plan to reduce prison crowding said that the plan called for the early release of thousands of inmates. In fact, the plan proposes releasing hundreds, not thousands, of inmates. —Brown said in court filings that he would ask lawmakers to permit the release hundreds of “low-risk” prisoners who are elderly or medically frail, along with offenders who earn credit for good conduct. He would also put thousands of inmates in camps dedicated to conservation work and fighting wildfires, in empty county beds and in a new prison set to open this summer.

It was unclear Friday whether the Legislature would agree. Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) called prospects for the plan “dubious” and questioned the wisdom of spending public dollars on more prison beds rather than rehabilitation efforts.

The filings, submitted just before a midnight deadline Thursday, made clear that even Brown has little taste for his own recommendations. The governor, contending that the inmate count has already been sufficiently lowered and he needs to do nothing more, will take the “unusual step” of drafting legislation he does not want, the documents say.

On Friday, his administration was campaigning against its own proposal.

Beard said the judges are fixated on an arbitrary number, ignoring improvements in prison conditions since court intervention began more than a decade ago.

“The state has transformed the prison healthcare system into one of the best in the nation,” Beard said. “This is about more than a number. The case is too important to the people of California, to the safety of our neighborhoods.”

Beard acknowledged that the state’s plan fails to meet the federal population target by about 2,570 inmates. Asked if state officials could avoid being held in contempt, Beard replied, “I certainly hope so,” adding, “We can’t do any more without creating problems.”

Prisoners’ lawyers said the governor offers too little, too late.

“There is no reason they can’t comply to the letter of the order in the extended time frame they have been given,” said Rebekah Evenson of the Prison Law Office, lead plaintiff in the 12-year-old court case that triggered the federal population caps four years ago. “They have to stop their political posturing and need to knuckle down.”

Evenson contended that California prisons are “bloated” with low-risk inmates who can and should go free.

In addition to freeing 650 prisoners who are elderly, frail or earn good-conduct credits, Brown’s plan calls for moving 1,700 others to the new prison and 1,300 to fire camps. The state would also lease 1,600 cells from county jails. Separately, the administration is already negotiating space for 1,200 additional inmates in various local facilities, some of them privately owned.

Beard said the state also is considering leasing private prisons and staffing those facilities with state corrections officers, but he provided no numbers.

This comes from The Atlantic, written by Andrew Cohen, April 8th 2013:

60 years ago, Pat Brown fought the mistreatment of the mentally ill. Today, his son, the governor of California, defends such mistreatment.

On January 8th, California Governor Jerry Brown ceremoniously declared an end to what he called the “prison emergency” in his state caused by epic overcrowding, chronic under-staffing, and the systemic mistreatment of inmates. “I mean, we’ve gone from serious constitutional problems to one of the finest prison systems in the United States,” he said, pitching a success story with which no federal court in the past two decades has ever agreed.

Not only was the prison system now the envy of the nation, the governor proclaimed, but the health care given to California inmates was so good that it was worthy of awe by ordinary citizens unencumbered by the bonds of custody. “Most of the people in prison get far better care for mental health problems or their physical well-being inside the prison than they’ll get once they’re released on the streets,” he said. And then Pat Brown’s son said this:

We’ve spent billions of dollars. We’ve hired hundreds, if not thousands, of professionals to make sure that we have excellent health care and excellent mental health care. And because of that, it is now time to return the control of our prison system to California. We have the constitutional obligation. We have the expertise and we’re ready to do it. There’s no question that there were big problems in California prisons — overcrowding, lack of health care, lack of mental health care, lots of other problems. But after decades of work, the job is now complete.

But it was not up to the Governor to unilaterally declare his state in compliance with its legal obligations to the inmates. The state long ago lost that right by persistently depriving prisoners of basic medical care under conditions that virtually every single reviewing court has deemed to be “cruel and unusual punishment” under the Eighth Amendment. Not only were the governor’s remarks an insult to all those mistreated people, in and out of prison; they were also irrelevant as a matter of law. He still needed permission from the federal courts to reclaim state control over prisons — and, in January, he asked for it.

The Scheme Sometime in the last few years, unwilling to pay the price of restoring basic constitutional rights to the inmates, frustrated state officials ginned up a new idea to wiggle out from under federal judicial oversight of their overcrowded and understaffed prisons. Instead of doing an honorable thing — complying in good faith with a a series of federal court orders requiring them to provide adequate medical treatment to thousands of mentally ill prisoners — state officials chose to do a dishonorable thing. They chose to cheat.

Instead of hiring enough psychiatrists and staff to help treat the inmates, or moving more quickly to provide inpatient care for the ill men and women, or following the recommendations of a court-appointed expert who urged them to alter their suicide prevention policies, California officials decided instead to interrogate mentally ill inmates without giving notice to, or getting consent from, the prisoners’ attorneys. State officials then used those interviews to argue in their January motion that California had complied with its legal duties to the inmates.

But such ex parte contact between officials and inmates violates California’s attorney ethics rules. (Imagine how a judge or jury would react to the use of a mentally ill person’s statements against that person in court.) Worse, at the same time that officials were unlawfully questioning these prisoners, they were denying requests for information about prison practices and policies made by the inmates’ attorneys. On Friday, a federal judge in Sacramento put an end to the sleazy scheme. He denied Gov. Brown’s motion and once again ordered California to obey the letter and the spirit of the Eighth Amendment.

The Background If you know something about the recent history of California’s continuing failure to humanely treat prisoners, then you will find frustrating U.S. District Judge Lawrence J. Karlton’s ruling in the case styled Coleman v. Brown. Once more, a judge had clearly set forth what officials must do to meet their legal obligations to the inmates. Once more, a jurist caught California blatantly disregarding its legal duties while pretending otherwise to the world. Once more, state officials have embraced a culture that dehumanizes inmates by diminishing their mental illnesses.

And if for some reason you know nothing about what’s been happening in California’s prisons these past few decades — if, for example, you didn’t pay attention when United States Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy declared California’s prisons unconstitutionally overcrowded — Judge Karlton’s ruling offers a quick summary of why the costly case has lingered unresolved for decades. It’s not that the state can’t comply. It’s that the state still doesn’t want to comply. It’s no more complicated than that.

Read the ruling for yourself and then compare it with Gov. Brown’s January announcement. For example, the “far better care for mental health problems” the governor said that state inmates now are receiving? That care is evidently so good, the actual evidence shows, that the state’s inmate suicide rate, which fell to 15.7 per 100,000 prisoners in 2009, has risen again to 23.72 per 100,000 prisoners in 2012. The most obvious sign of poor mental health treatment — the pace of suicides — is getting worse, not better, inside Gov. Brown’s prisons.

by Mutope Duguma, Sitawa N. Jamaa, Abdul O. Shakur and Sondai K. Dumisani Gov. Brown has declared that the prison crisis that allowed prisoners to die is over and that prisoners are receiving good care. His words, not ours.

It is obvious that the governor has not produced any data that supports his claim. Furthermore, the governor is deliberately misinforming the public, because he and the officials of CDCr – the secretary and undersecretary – are arbitrarily choosing not to provide the public with adequate information that pertains to the incompetence that continues to endanger prisoners by murdering them through direct medical neglect and incompetence.

In this photo taken as part of federal litigation over California prison conditions, prisoners await a group therapy session at Mule Creek State Prison. How could being confined in tiny cages dissuade prisoners from committing suicide? – Photo filed in U.S. District Court briefings

We prisoners have read the Los Angeles Times article by Paige St. John, “California suppressed consultant’s report on inmate suicides,” dated Feb. 28, 2013, and we can only hope that justice will continue to prevail, by not only maintaining the oversight of CDCr’s “health care service,” as well as extend it to the very root of the problems that cause the very many deaths and suicides that are happening throughout CDCr. Solitary confinement in California and throughout the United States is real. The lingering of human beings – i.e., prisoners – in these torture chambers (SHUs and Ad Segs) indefinitely has basically created the result that led to human beings dying unnecessarily inside these solitary confinement torture units.

Alex Machado, Christian Gomez, Armando Morales, John Owen Vick and Hozel Alonzo Blanchard are all men who should be alive, by all means, and the fact that the CDCr has reported 32 deaths by suicide in the year of 2012 alone should be more than enough reason for the oversight to be continued – and expanded as well. The CDCr’s own experts afforded them the procedures to follow in order to prevent such deaths. However, not only did the CDCr attempt to suppress this report and now the evidence in it, but the CDCr had the audacity to request that the United States District Court destroy that report.

The governor and the officials of CDCr are arbitrarily choosing not to provide the public with adequate information that pertains to the incompetence that continues to endanger prisoners by murdering them through direct medical neglect and incompetence.

Thankfully, for the lives of California prisoners, the judge refused to cooperate with such a conspiracy. Suppression of evidence like this is not an isolated act, because we prisoners know that the licensed vocational nurses and registered nurses and doctors do not responsibly oversee the CDCr health care services. Their actions are influenced by the local officials and officers who have total control over the prison.

Alex Machado, Christian Gomez, Armando Morales, John Owen Vick and Hozel Alonzo Blanchard are all men who should be alive, by all means, and the fact that the CDCr has reported 32 deaths by suicide in the year of 2012 alone should be more than enough reason for the oversight to be continued – and expanded as well.

Prison staff relationships are intermingled through personal relations – marriage, family, friendship – and are reflected by the transitions from health care services to corrections or vice versa. A good example as to how much the officials and officers control health care services can be seen in the two 2011 prisoner hunger strikes.

On July 2, 2011, prisoners held in solitary confinement in SHU and Ad Seg for years, subjected to torture and cruel and unusual punishment in violation of our U.S. constitutional rights, decided to go on a peaceful hunger strike, in which over 6,000 of us participated.

The only reason we received adequate health care services (medical treatment) during our July 1, 2011, hunger strike that lasted to July 20 is because the federal receivership oversaw the medical treatment; prisoners were weighed, vitals checked, vitamins provided daily. This prevented thousands of prisoners from suffering when many emergencies could have resulted in thousands of prisoners dying, due to CDCr Secretary Matthew Cate and Undersecretary Scott Kernan violating a verbal agreement to implement our reasonable Five Core Demands, an agreement that resulted in us ending our first hunger strike.

The only reason we received adequate health care services (medical treatment) during our July 1, 2011, hunger strike that lasted to July 20 is because the federal receivership oversaw the medical treatment.

Therefore, we decided to go back on our second hunger strike on Sept. 26, 2011, in which 12,000 prisoners participated throughout CDCr, clearly demonstrating that there is a widespread problem of deliberate medical neglect and torture inside CDCr solitary confinement units.

During our Sept. 26, 2011, hunger strike, which lasted to Oct. 13, 2011, the federal receivership allowed CDCr to oversee the health care services. The result of this action not only placed prisoners’ health at risk, but CDCr immediately implemented a policy protocol for overseeing the hunger strike that was catastrophic for prisoners: Thousands suffered and several died when CDCr was allowed to have control over the hunger strike, in which hunger strikers were denied medical treatment throughout the hunger strike.

The prison guards have no medical training yet were allowed to say to medical personnel that a prisoner was faking – “He’s not sick” – and oddly enough, the medical staff tended to allow this to be the authority on which they proceeded. Thousands of prisoners suffered behind this ill advised information. We received no daily checkups, no vitals checks, no vitamins, no weigh-ins conducted under CDCr medical supervision. Many times medical problems were treated too late and by this time the damage was done.

The conflict of interest lies in the relationships between the prison guards, who are responsible for providing security only, and those who are responsible for providing health care services, food and religious services etc. Unfortunately, the prison guards have structured the prison environment around the deprivation of the prisoners, simply to demonstrate its dominance over prisoners, which creates severe violation of prisoners’ constitutionally protected rights.

During our Sept. 26, 2011, hunger strike, which lasted to Oct. 13, 2011, thousands suffered and several died when CDCr was allowed to have control over the hunger strike, in which hunger strikers were denied medical treatment throughout the hunger strike.

The Bill of Rights’ 10 original amendments and Reconstruction amendments 11 through 27 of the Constitution – particularly important in respect to prisoners, the First, Fifth, Eighth and 14th Amendments – are deliberately violated routinely. The many settlements of prisoner lawsuits in years past speak volumes to this fact.

Gov. Brown’s current changes have not rendered any justice or humane treatment of prisoners thus far, and the death count and the many prisoners held inside solitary confinement, who suffer from numerous ailments and torture, only seem to exacerbate this problem. Therefore, we prisoners can only hope, in the interest of our livelihood and humanity, that the courts expand their oversight and open up an independent investigation as to why prisoners are held unjustly in solitary confinement.Send our brothers some love and light:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP)—California counties are housing more than 1,100 inmates on long-term sentences in jails designed for stays of a year or less, according to the first report detailing the growth in that population under Gov. Jerry Brown’s criminal justice realignment strategy.

The oversight of so many long-term inmates is presenting challenges for county sheriffs, especially with the number expected to grow markedly in the years ahead. In addition to finding adequate space to house the new population, the sheriffs also must provide the inmates with education, treatment programs, rehabilitation services and recreation, which adds to their costs.

Vehicle theft, drug trafficking, receiving stolen property, identity theft and commercial burglary were the most common crimes for jail inmates who were sentenced to 5 to 10 years in county jails, according to the report, which was obtained by The Associated Press before its public release.

The report, covering all but six of the state’s 58 counties, was done by the California State Sheriffs’ Association and sent to the governor’s administration and Legislature.

“We are not set up to house inmates for this period of time,” said Nick Warner, the association’s legislative director. “They’re living in conditions that they’re not designed to stay in for this long.”

The Los Angeles County Jail is holding 35 percent of all long-term inmates. Statewide, 44 inmates already have been sentenced to more than a decade in local jails, with one Los Angeles County man serving a 43-year term for trafficking large amounts of drugs.

As of Monday, the association found that 1,153 inmates in county jails were sentenced to at least five years. Drug trafficking resulted in most of the sentences topping a decade, although a Riverside County inmate is serving nearly 13 years for felony child abuse and a Solano County inmate is serving more than 10 years as a serial thief.

Disclaimer

***Not all content on this website has been verified to be true. Any parties mentioned are innocent of any accusations or allegations made against them until proven guilty in a court of law. The staff members of PWN are not responsible for contents submitted by inmates. PWN is not liable for any false or erroneous information submitted for publication by people inside or outside of prison. We do our best to verify information we receive. Opinions aired here are not necessarily those of Prison Watch Network.***